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spacestationtrustfund's review
3.0
『소설가 구보씨의 일일』 by Pak Taewon (박태원 朴泰遠). Translation primarily by Sunyoung Park. A note on the title: that's 소설 (novel) + 가 (-ist) + 구보 (Kubo) + 씨 (sir) + 의 (-'s) + 일일 (everyday, daily). Kubo (구보 丘甫) was also one of Pak Taewon's pen names.
Few of Pak Taewon's works have been translated (into any language), in no small part because he, along with all other Korean writers who either ended up in or deliberately moved to what became North Korea after the partition of the country, is not exactly popular in South Korea. This is a shame, because he was a fascinating figure, and close friends with many contemporary* authors, including Yi Sang (이상). Here's them being cute (with Kim Soun):
[L-R: 이상, 박태원, 김소운, 서울, 1936년경]
Besides this book, other English-language translations of Pak Taewon's writing include Scenes from Ch'ŏnggye Stream (『천변풍경』 川邊風景) translated by Ok Young Kim Chang, who also translated Yi Cheongjun (이청준)'s Seopyeonje and Han Musuk (한무숙)'s Encounter; "A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist" (『소설가 구보씨의 일일』) in On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea; and "The Barbershop Boy" (『천변풍경』) in A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction. That's pretty much it.
*In the Korean sense, i.e., before the Korean War but after the turn of the century. This is in contrast to "modern," which refers to everything after the liberation of Korea from the Imperial Japanese occupation.
Few of Pak Taewon's works have been translated (into any language), in no small part because he, along with all other Korean writers who either ended up in or deliberately moved to what became North Korea after the partition of the country, is not exactly popular in South Korea. This is a shame, because he was a fascinating figure, and close friends with many contemporary* authors, including Yi Sang (이상). Here's them being cute (with Kim Soun):
[L-R: 이상, 박태원, 김소운, 서울, 1936년경]
Besides this book, other English-language translations of Pak Taewon's writing include Scenes from Ch'ŏnggye Stream (『천변풍경』 川邊風景) translated by Ok Young Kim Chang, who also translated Yi Cheongjun (이청준)'s Seopyeonje and Han Musuk (한무숙)'s Encounter; "A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist" (『소설가 구보씨의 일일』) in On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea; and "The Barbershop Boy" (『천변풍경』) in A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction. That's pretty much it.
*In the Korean sense, i.e., before the Korean War but after the turn of the century. This is in contrast to "modern," which refers to everything after the liberation of Korea from the Imperial Japanese occupation.
mayajb02's review
4.0
Read for my Intro to Modern Korean Literature class. This is another work that examines the relationship between Korean intellectuals and their loved ones during the period of Japanese colonization. I think the idea of the narrator being a mother for the first few paragraphs was very effective in putting you in the shoes of how the average Korean person felt about this era. I really appreciated how the narration switched several times, which is something I've noticed with many other Korean authors. Makes me wonder if those works are referencing this, or if this work is one that inspired that style of writing.
arirang's review
4.0
"내일부터, 내 집에 있겠소, 창작하겠소"
"Tomorrow...from tomorrow, I'll stay at home, I'll write."
"구소설가 구보씨의 일일/ "A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist" by 박태원(Pak Taewon) is Volume 93 in Asia Publishers' bilingual series of Modern Korean short stories.
a sketch of Kubo drawn by Pak's friend, the author Yi Sang, rather disappointingly omitted from this edition
For my general comments on the series see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1709389820?. The fact that this is Volume 93, with an additional K-Fiction series of 15+ books also published, shows the sheer size of the undertaking.
This story has been translated by Sunyoung Park working with Jefferson J.A. Gatrall and Kevin o'Rourke and comes with an afterword from a literary critic, in this case, Chun Jung-hwan.
Pak is known for his experimental prose, and even the Korean version comes with 83 footnotes, albeit many explain Japanese loan words (written as the novel is during the Japanese colonial occupation) which are no longer used.
The translator admits to having made the difficult decision to "make two major adjustments in translating Pak Taewon's experimental prose". Specifically she simplified in places two particular features in the English rendition: Pak's odd uses of tenses ("he habitually starts a paragraph in the past tense, and then, as if staging a scene, narrates the tense in the present. Also he tends to assign the past tense to external actions, while everything that is filtered through Kubo's perception is described in the present tense."), and his odd use of commas to separate subject and predicate. Her rationale is that his use of such devices is not always consistent, can be confusing and doesn't always produce the same effect in English, although only the third seems convincing.
Kubo, second son of a middle-class family, is aged 26 when the novel starts:
"His mother feels heavy hearted. She is sorry for her son. He has no intention of looking for a regular job. He just reads, writes and wanders aimlessly through the night."
"어머니는 어디 월급 자리라도 구할 생각은 없이, 밤낮으로, 책이나 읽고 글이나 쓰고 혹은 공연스레 밤중까지 쏘다니고 하는 아들이, 보기에 딱하고, 또 답답하였다." (NB the Korean original is just one sentence, which has been chopped into four simpler sentences in the translation)
In a neat echo of the contemporary story [b:The World's Most Expensive Novel|29846999|The World's Most Expensive Novel|Kim Min-Jung|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1459989419s/29846999.jpg|50206934] in the same bilingual series, "his mother thinks that a regular* job would be much better than writing.". Although she is proud when he sells a piece of work and gives her money to buy a new skirt, immediately going around her neighbours wearing it, to boast, "such scenes do not happen often."
(* the Korean word for such a job - 월급쟁이- implies a regular monthly salary)
His mother's frustrations are understandable. Kubo is a published novelist but his day-to-day activity seems to mainly involve "wandering the streets aimlessly with a walking stick in one hand and a notebook in the other", although he justifies this as "only proper than an urban novelist should be well acquainted with the gates of the city". And it's just such a "Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist" that comprises the story.
While he wanders Kubo worries about his health, watches people (but seldom interacting with them), and ponders his own loneliness, and his lack of fulfilment.
"What is my greatest wish? Kubo lit a cigarette. While cleaning his pipe at the hearth, Ishikawa Takuboku (+) once asked what is my real desire? Kubo felt he ought to have such a desire, but he found he hadn't."
(+ an early 20th Century Japanese poet and novelist)
He worries about his weak eyesight, his poor hearing (which he self diagnoses "for no particular reason", while devouring a medical dictionary, as due to "chronic wet otitis media catarrh"), and countless other conditions from which he suffers, or at least believes he does "Constipation. Irregular urination. Fatigue. Ennui. Headache. Heavy-headedness...
[...]
It's not just his nerves. With this head, with this body, what will I ever accomplish. Kubo feels somewhat threatened by the energetic body and resilient gait of a virile man just passing."
And he more, astutely, diagnoses his loneliness as "a consequence of his irresolute personality". His mother tried to arrange a marriage, but the socially awkward Kubo failed to follow up on the first introduced meeting with the girl, ("he didn't want to cause her any unwarranted distress, in case she wasn't interested in him"). When today, months later, he fortuitously sees her on a tram, he deliberately avoids any eye contact, only to regret it the second she steps off.
He then recalls when his indecisiveness cost him the chance of love while he was living in Tokyo. A girl he met through an uncharacteristically bold move (he read her notebook in a coffee shop to find her address) tells him at the end of their first romantic date she is already engaged to someone Kubo knows and asks for his advice. But to her disappointment Kubo defers to the other: now he reflects
"When she blamed me through her sobs, saying that my sense of loyalty and fear of reproach derived from a lack of love and passion, she was evidently right.
...
I should have run after her. I should have seized her slender shoulders, I should have confessed that all my words till now have been lies, that I can never forego our love, that we must fight against all obstacles."
Finally, after his day of wandering and pondering he decides;
"Tomorrow...from tomorrow, I'll stay at home, I'll write.
Kubo the Novelist is materially longer (twice the average) than the other books I have read in the series, and this makes for a more substantial story, closer to a novel(la). While some of the experimentation with language is unfortunately lost in translation, it's a fascinating character study as well as an exploration of 1930s Seoul in the era of "colonial modernity" as Korea, while still under Japanese rule, came increasingly under Western cultural influence. Recommended.
"Tomorrow...from tomorrow, I'll stay at home, I'll write."
"구소설가 구보씨의 일일/ "A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist" by 박태원(Pak Taewon) is Volume 93 in Asia Publishers' bilingual series of Modern Korean short stories.
a sketch of Kubo drawn by Pak's friend, the author Yi Sang, rather disappointingly omitted from this edition
For my general comments on the series see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1709389820?. The fact that this is Volume 93, with an additional K-Fiction series of 15+ books also published, shows the sheer size of the undertaking.
This story has been translated by Sunyoung Park working with Jefferson J.A. Gatrall and Kevin o'Rourke and comes with an afterword from a literary critic, in this case, Chun Jung-hwan.
Pak is known for his experimental prose, and even the Korean version comes with 83 footnotes, albeit many explain Japanese loan words (written as the novel is during the Japanese colonial occupation) which are no longer used.
The translator admits to having made the difficult decision to "make two major adjustments in translating Pak Taewon's experimental prose". Specifically she simplified in places two particular features in the English rendition: Pak's odd uses of tenses ("he habitually starts a paragraph in the past tense, and then, as if staging a scene, narrates the tense in the present. Also he tends to assign the past tense to external actions, while everything that is filtered through Kubo's perception is described in the present tense."), and his odd use of commas to separate subject and predicate. Her rationale is that his use of such devices is not always consistent, can be confusing and doesn't always produce the same effect in English, although only the third seems convincing.
Kubo, second son of a middle-class family, is aged 26 when the novel starts:
"His mother feels heavy hearted. She is sorry for her son. He has no intention of looking for a regular job. He just reads, writes and wanders aimlessly through the night."
"어머니는 어디 월급 자리라도 구할 생각은 없이, 밤낮으로, 책이나 읽고 글이나 쓰고 혹은 공연스레 밤중까지 쏘다니고 하는 아들이, 보기에 딱하고, 또 답답하였다." (NB the Korean original is just one sentence, which has been chopped into four simpler sentences in the translation)
In a neat echo of the contemporary story [b:The World's Most Expensive Novel|29846999|The World's Most Expensive Novel|Kim Min-Jung|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1459989419s/29846999.jpg|50206934] in the same bilingual series, "his mother thinks that a regular* job would be much better than writing.". Although she is proud when he sells a piece of work and gives her money to buy a new skirt, immediately going around her neighbours wearing it, to boast, "such scenes do not happen often."
(* the Korean word for such a job - 월급쟁이- implies a regular monthly salary)
His mother's frustrations are understandable. Kubo is a published novelist but his day-to-day activity seems to mainly involve "wandering the streets aimlessly with a walking stick in one hand and a notebook in the other", although he justifies this as "only proper than an urban novelist should be well acquainted with the gates of the city". And it's just such a "Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist" that comprises the story.
While he wanders Kubo worries about his health, watches people (but seldom interacting with them), and ponders his own loneliness, and his lack of fulfilment.
"What is my greatest wish? Kubo lit a cigarette. While cleaning his pipe at the hearth, Ishikawa Takuboku (+) once asked what is my real desire? Kubo felt he ought to have such a desire, but he found he hadn't."
(+ an early 20th Century Japanese poet and novelist)
He worries about his weak eyesight, his poor hearing (which he self diagnoses "for no particular reason", while devouring a medical dictionary, as due to "chronic wet otitis media catarrh"), and countless other conditions from which he suffers, or at least believes he does "Constipation. Irregular urination. Fatigue. Ennui. Headache. Heavy-headedness...
[...]
It's not just his nerves. With this head, with this body, what will I ever accomplish. Kubo feels somewhat threatened by the energetic body and resilient gait of a virile man just passing."
And he more, astutely, diagnoses his loneliness as "a consequence of his irresolute personality". His mother tried to arrange a marriage, but the socially awkward Kubo failed to follow up on the first introduced meeting with the girl, ("he didn't want to cause her any unwarranted distress, in case she wasn't interested in him"). When today, months later, he fortuitously sees her on a tram, he deliberately avoids any eye contact, only to regret it the second she steps off.
He then recalls when his indecisiveness cost him the chance of love while he was living in Tokyo. A girl he met through an uncharacteristically bold move (he read her notebook in a coffee shop to find her address) tells him at the end of their first romantic date she is already engaged to someone Kubo knows and asks for his advice. But to her disappointment Kubo defers to the other: now he reflects
"When she blamed me through her sobs, saying that my sense of loyalty and fear of reproach derived from a lack of love and passion, she was evidently right.
...
I should have run after her. I should have seized her slender shoulders, I should have confessed that all my words till now have been lies, that I can never forego our love, that we must fight against all obstacles."
Finally, after his day of wandering and pondering he decides;
"Tomorrow...from tomorrow, I'll stay at home, I'll write.
Kubo the Novelist is materially longer (twice the average) than the other books I have read in the series, and this makes for a more substantial story, closer to a novel(la). While some of the experimentation with language is unfortunately lost in translation, it's a fascinating character study as well as an exploration of 1930s Seoul in the era of "colonial modernity" as Korea, while still under Japanese rule, came increasingly under Western cultural influence. Recommended.
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